Plan to tap Lake Conroe for drinking water stirs conflict

1of20Don Beckham of Lake Conroe Water Sports,helps customers. Some lake residents oppose plans to use the lake for area water needs.Photo: Jerry Baker, Freelance

2of20Jacob Anastasiades and Nickayla Floyd on Lake Conroe.Photo: Jerry Baker, for the Chronicle

3of20Waitress Natasha Johnson, 21, of Lake Conroe, wipes down tables at Papa's on the Lake after a rainy morning on Monday, May 18, 2015. (Photo by Jerry Baker/Freelance)Photo: Jerry Baker, for the Chronicle

4of20Jacob Camilleri, right, gets ready to help his dad, Mike, of Bentwater, dock their boat at Sam's Boat on Lake Conroe.Photo: Jerry Baker, for the Chronicle

5of20Texas reservoirs recover from droughtTexas waters such as Lake Travis (seen above in 2010) have seen large capacity gains in the past months compared to their reduced drought levels.See which lakes and reservoirs have made the biggest changes.Photo: Gary Miller, Getty Images

6of20Lake Texoma (Texas and Oklahoma)Percent full in July 2014: 84.1Photo: John Elk, Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images

20of20Sam Rayburn ReservoirPercent full in July 2015: 100Photo: Guiseppe Barranco

MONTGOMERY - From the deck of Papa's on the Lake, the pink-hued party pad on Lake Conroe, it's hard to see anything but a good time. The glassy lake is full to the brim, keeping houseboats afloat and providing a slick track for power skis.

These waters, however, have become a source of conflict. With memories of a disappearing lake still fresh, residents are rallying against a plan to wean rapidly growing Montgomery County off groundwater by tapping the reservoir for drinking water, calling on officials to "Save the Lake."

It was not too long ago that a punishing drought had lowered the lake by as many as 9 feet below normal, leaving several waterfront homeowners with unwanted beaches and unusable docks and local businesses without customers.

Now several lakeside homeowners associations are circulating a petition asking the Conroe-based Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District to suspend its plan, set to take effect Jan. 1, while the potential consequences are studied further.

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"Let's just slow down a bit," said Scott Sustman, who leads the Lake Conroe Communities Network. The group asserts that the planned move would put too much pressure on the lake and threaten its role in the local economy.

The plan would limit the amount of water that the county pumps from underground to avoid depleting the Gulf Coast Aquifer and causing land to sink. The intended cap represents a one-third reduction in the county's current groundwater use and comes as forecasts show it nearly doubling in population, to 1 million people, by 2035.

"Everyone is concerned about the rapid growth," said Paul Nelson, the Lone Star district's assistant general manager. "That's why we have to look at the big picture. We're glad to have a diversity of water supply."

Texans always have wrangled over water. But the Lake Conroe skirmish reflects an intensifying anxiety in thriving places like Montgomery County as they grapple with the consequences of their new popularity.

Elsewhere in the state, the Lower Colorado River Authority has suspended water deliveries to rice farmers after concluding that two reservoirs near Austin were dangerously low. Lakes Buchanan and Travis supply drinking water for roughly 1 million Texans, with more and more people moving into nearby towns that barely existed, if at all, before dams were built in the 1930s.

Fight in Hays County

Hays County residents, meanwhile, are fighting plans by Houston-based Electro Purification to pump millions of gallons of water a day from the aquifer beneath them and sell the water to booming Austin suburbs.

Texas lawmakers this session have filed nearly 40 bills related to water rights. One bill would require sellers of lakefront properties to inform prospective buyers that water levels may not be steady, whether it's because of nature or the need to tap a reservoir for municipal or industrial use. State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, introduced the legislation, which is now in the Senate after being passed by the House.

"We are seeing tensions arise over growth-induced water demands," said Ronald Kaiser, a professor of water policy and law at Texas A&M University. "It is the uncertainty of change."

For generations, residents of Montgomery County have relied exclusively on groundwater to satisfy their thirst - a dependence that persisted even after the construction of a major reservoir.

Lake Conroe is man-made, created in 1973 by flooding 21,000 acres of East Texas piney woods on the San Jacinto River's west fork as a water source for the city of Houston and Montgomery County. Since then, the lakeside area has flourished, with restaurants, marinas and subdivisions interwoven with golf courses.

At first, Houstonians bought houses here as weekend or empty-nest retreats, places where they could go to sail or fish or just watch the water ripple from a chair on the shore. That began to change as more jobs came to The Woodlands, some 15 miles south, and people realized they could raise families while making relatively easy commutes from homes near the lake.

With the growth, the lake has become a key piece of the local economy. Texas A&M researchers in 2012 concluded that sales tax revenues and property values dropped with water levels in the reservoir.

The most unnerving part of the analysis: With water levels below normal, lakefront homeowners could expect double-digit declines in their property values, totalling up to $1.1 billion in losses.

Tax losses feared

The city of Montgomery, meanwhile, would lose $1.6 million a year in sales taxes for each foot the reservoir dropped beyond the first two.

"You can run your boat aground and walk up to Papa's, but that is not the experience you want," said Sustman, who has owned property along the lake since 1996. "People would not come to a community like this if they were not water enthusiasts."

Even then, Sustman said his criticism of the plan to draw water from the reservoir is about more than lake levels. He said the shift by the county is based on a false premise because there is abundant groundwater, particularly at lower depths, and there are no signs of land sinking in the county because of pumping.

"Everyone recognizes that the lake is designed to be a reservoir," Sustman said. "This is not about lake levels. It's about how best to use resources. If we use groundwater and the aquifer recharges, that's what nature intended."

The cities of Conroe, Magnolia, Oak Ridge North, Panorama Village, Shenandoah and Willis are pushing back against the plan, too, saying it would slow the county's economic growth.

Scott Harper, president of the Conroe-Lake Conroe Chamber of Commerce, said businesses suffered when lake levels were below normal from 2010 to 2014 because of drought. But the chamber hasn't taken a position in the long-term planning battle.

"With a traditional year of rainfall, no one would notice water was being taken out" of Lake Conroe, Harper said. "But we usually don't have a traditional year. We have either a lot of rainfall or nothing."

Jim Lester, president of the Houston Advanced Research Center in The Woodlands, said the plan's critics place too much emphasis on economic growth.

"Everyone knows it's a reservoir, but the people around it do not want to accept it," he said. "The system was built to protect human health, but we've come to a point where it's about viewscapes and lawns."

Lester and some other water experts said that pumping the same amount of groundwater - or more - is not sustainable for the county. That's because the aquifer replenishes slowly, often at a rate of less than an inch a year. It took as many as 40,000 years for groundwater to accumulate in parts of Montgomery County, a U.S. Geological Survey study found in 2013.

Plan would start this summer

The Lone Star district's plan would limit groundwater usage to 64,000 acre-feet a year, down from the roughly 85,000 acre-feet now pumped across the county. An acre-foot is enough to satisfy the needs of two or three typical families for a year.

To bridge the gap and help satisfy new demands, the San Jacinto River Authority, which operates the reservoir, would withdraw 25,000 acre-feet a year from the lake at first, starting this summer. By 2045, it would pull up to 100,000 acre-feet a year.

That's less water than the amount that typically spills over the dam each year when Lake Conroe overflows. With slightly above-average rainfall so far this year, the authority already has released about 100,000 acre-feet of water from the dam to maintain the reservoir at its normal pool elevation, said Jace Houston, the authority's general manager.

The Lone Star district intends to monitor how the conversion affects the aquifer's waters levels over the next two years. If it responds favorably, then the cap could be increased, said Nelson, the assistant general manager.